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A MOTOR-FLIGHT THROUGH FRANCE monuments, rising unshaken through the blown dust of nearly a thousand years, gives a tangible image of the way in which the Roman spirit has persisted through the fluctuations of history.

To learn that these very monuments have been turned to base uses by barbarous prince-bishops—the arch converted into a fortified Château de l'Arc, the theatre into an outwork of the main fortress—adds impressiveness to their mutilated splendour, awing one with the image of a whole reconstructed from such fragments.

Among these, the theatre, now quite stripped of ornament, produces its effect only by means of its size, and of the beautiful sweep of its converging lines; but the great golden-brown arch—standing alone in a wide grassy square—keeps on three sides a Corinthian mask of cornice and column, and a rich embossing of fruit and flower-garlands, of sirens, trophies and battle-scenes. All this decoration is typically Roman—vigorously carved and somewhat indiscriminately applied. One looks in vain for the sensitive ornament of the arch of Saint Remy, in which Mérimée's keen eye saw a germ of the coming Gothic: the sculpture of Orange follows the [ 136 ]